MLS Table As It Stands Now – 10/4 Update

A week later, and though the table has tightened a little, the same eight teams as last week are still on track for the playoffs. As it stands now, the playoffs would be:

East

Columbus vs Colorado

Chicago vs New England

West

Los Angeles vs Chivas

Houston vs. Seattle

Some random thoughts –

Do you want a single table for the MLS? Well, you got it. Given the new playoff format, at this stage of the season we essentially have a single table. Results now have little to do with what conference you are in. The wild card is blind to conference, and it those four wild card slots are race that matters at this point. In fact, although unlikely, there is an outside chance that all four wild card spots could go to teams in the west.

Bad week for New England – Games in hand are only useful if you win them, and the Revs only managed to get one point out of their possible six this week. They still have a game in hand, but they better win it if they want to make themselves safe, and their run-in is murder – two games against Columbus and one against Chicago. Speaking of which…

Chicago is staggering up to the finish line. They have not won a game since August 23, and with their final two games against New England and Chivas, there are no gimmees in the schedule. If they lose both, it is possible they could find themselves on the outside looking in.

Chivas helped themselves a ton by beating DC United. They will host Kansas City on Saturday in a do-or-die game for KC, and Chivas will be without Jonathan Bornstein who will be in Honduras with the USMNT. After that, they have three games in nine days to end their season which includes that trip to Chicago.

The Sounders are in a great position. Their win against Columbus was a godsend for them, and they now have one of the smoother finishes – away to KC and home to Dallas.

Don’t bet against Toronto. They have nine potential points in their three remaining games out there, and San Jose, Salt Lake and New York could very well give it to them. Those first two games are at home, and the BMO should be rocking to try to thrust their team into the playoffs for the first time.

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11 Comments

TomOctober 4, 2009

The reason I still want an “official” single table is seeding; the play-offs would more fair, and more interest if the teams were seeded 1-8 by record instead of two sets of 1-4. As it is now, Columbus will get a harder draw than Chicago, who are several 5 points and 4 places below them; because Columbus will get Colorado, who have more points than Chicago’s opponent, New England.

i dont think a single table will work in the this part of the world. i mean think about, All the other leagues play in smaller mass of land so for them a single table make sense. Here we have this huge mass of land with the USA and Canada in one league.
The only way to make sense of it would be to separate it by conference. and if we have 20 teams by 2012 this is what i see the league looking like.
EASTERN CONFERENCE
ATLANTIC DIVISION MIDLAND DIVISION
New England Revolution Columbus Crew
D.C. United Chicago Fire
New York Red Bulls Toronto FC
Philadelphia Union Kansas City Wizards
Montreal Impact St.Louis Lancers

Chivas is not done. There’s still hope to that we can win the WEST.
Just don’t tell Galaxy fans, who want the MLS Cup engraved with the Galaxy name already.
Missing the playoffs since 2005 will make anyone delusional.

The Chivas fan hit the nail on the head. They can still win the West, and with them averaging 1.5 points per game, they are projected to be in a three way tie for first. My Sounders have the same amount of points with two games more played.
How can anyone not be in favor of playoffs looking at the West matchups the way you have them ?
LA – Chivas and Seattle – Houston, it doesn’t get any better than that !
Sounders have Houstons number, but one of those wins was last min goal to tie, followed up by quick OT goal to stay alive in US Cup.

I hope y’all find it in your hearts to root for Seattle, if just out of charity. Cinderella expansion team (yeah heah USL blah blah blah) plus winning the cup in our own home stadium? It’d be the first truly wonderous moment in the history of Seattle sports, which always seem defined as “close but no cigar.”

Daniel, you realize your divisions have the Colorado Rapids (my team) in a different division from our nearest rilvals, Real Salt Lake, and our second nearest rilvals, Kansas City. That is the problem with divisions, someone is always artificially seperated from someone else. 16 teams next year can simply fit in a single table with a balanced schedule.

When the league goes beyond that to 18 teams, why can’t we have an unbalanced single table schedule? We already have unbalanced schedules inthe current divisions; the Rapids, for instance, only play extra “conference” games against Dallas and Real Salt Lake; thus, their schedule is quite different from LA’s or Chivas’. In an 18 team league, why not just play 13 opponents twice and 4 opponents once? It would be easy to insure every team plays at least it’s 5 or so best rilvals home and away, that the best 8 teams make the playoffs, and the seeding is as fair as it can be. Plus, we’ll differentiate our product from competitors like Lacross and Arena Football, etc…